Russia charges Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorist activity and placed him on an international wanted list, the agency said Wednesday.

The FSB accused Telegram of failing to remove channels, chats and bots allegedly used by Ukrainian intelligence and extremist groups to coordinate sabotage, attacks and cyber fraud inside Russia, according to Interfax.

Durov charges carry a sentence that could lead to life imprisonment. The FSB did not say whether Russia had requested an Interpol Red Notice, which would not, in itself, constitute an international arrest warrant.

The case escalates an investigation opened in February after Russia began restricting Telegram’s operations. The platform has been fined more than 100 million rubles ($1.25 million) this year, primarily for failing to remove content prohibited under Russian law, Interfax reported.

Telegram is one of crypto’s largest distribution platforms, hosting project communities, trading groups, bots and blockchain-based Mini Apps.

It is also closely integrated with The Open Network, whose native token was renamed from Toncoin to Gram in June. TON supports payments, tokenized assets and Mini Apps inside Telegram, giving the network access to the messaging service’s more than 1 billion users, according to the TON website.

Gram is trading at $1.42, down roughly 2.4% over the last 24 hours. Earlier this month, Durov said Telegram will roll out a native, non-custodial Gram wallet to every Telegram app.